Connor Herson: Traditional at Heart

An athlete portrait with a real subject, which is the scheduling problem. Connor Herson came up in a climbing family doing all of it, bouldering, sport and the Yosemite big wall trad that made his name, and this La Sportiva film by Double H Productions sets that against a degree at Stanford.

This is for anyone who wants to understand where one of the most complete young trad climbers in America came from. It is also for students who climb, because the film treats fitting cutting-edge ascents around midterms as the story rather than a footnote. Skip it if you want an ascent film. There is context and conversation here, and the climbing is illustration.

What works is the family thread. Herson's background explains his range, and the film lets it. What it gets wrong is that twenty-two minutes of context with no central climb leaves you wanting the climb. Herson's hardest ascents happen in other films.

Born From the Climbing Life: Episode 4, Black Diamond's record of his first ascent of Drifter's Escape in Squamish, proposed at 5.15a, is that film. Watch this one first for the person, then that one for the route. Together they make sense. Apart, this one is the thinner half.